"We need to be praying for Hillary Clinton," he said at the conference in Washington, DC. "There is special needs there. There's mental impairment. I mean, seriously. She can't remember."

He added that a joke he told earlier in the week was "not a proper thing to say, because again, I'm making fun of the mentally impaired and that's not right."

While it appeared the Texas congressman was making a joke about Clinton's mental health, the former secretary of state's health has become in issue on far-right news outlets. The Drudge Report and other lesser-known websites have at times promoted conspiracy theories about her health in an effort to characterize her as unfit to serve in office.